Hello everyone and welcome back to another video it is Francesco here
Welcome to Keep Productive YouTube channel
If you're a brand new and if your regular welcome back, so today we are speaking with Ran Segall
Who is a designer as well as a YouTuber who speaks a lot on the topic of
consultation as well as sort of like being is I guess essentially
Organized then like motivated to give the best result. You can with client when you're designing
so hopefully today we can go through a bit about how he
organizes his day with tools a little bit about his remote working schedule, and I guess just some
general advice for designers that are looking
to sort of grow and build their efforts
So first off Ron maybe you can introduce yourself it will detail and and share about your YouTube channel
Which is tightly flux, right?
Yep. So thanks. Thanks so much for having me on the show francesco been really really. Yeah. Thank you
So yeah, I'm a designer
I'm based in Tel Aviv Israel
And I work with clients all around the world and I do I help them with with product design
branding marketing
Web design everything that they need and I also have my own product company, which is called cross, bro
And it helps freelancers create proposals. And so I kind of run two businesses at the same time
and then I have a youtube channel flux as you've said where I am kind of uploading a video every day kind of
documenting my process how I work what I learn along the way when when I succeed when I fail try to share everything and
authentically
to keep it real as I
like it cuz you do like weekday videos, but you
You quite quite like how are you? So share what's gone? Well, what's gone bad, but you you keep it content pretty consistent. So
It's great to watch that and and I was just saying before we started
I
Move dude them freelance marketing. But even though it's you focus on it actually helps me with my process
So I will clue the link inscription for everyone to go and enjoy
I think a lot of people who are in the freelancer consultation
It doesn't matter what your services are. We struggle with the same thing, you know getting clients doing good work
Pricing your work. So we all have the same challenges. Yeah, especially the price and stuff tricky one
Yeah brilliant. So how long can I ask how long you've been in the graphic design business?
So I started
When I was in high school, so I don't know how many years is that maybe I don't know maybe 20 years
But I've been I've been mainly
Beginning of my career. I worked at agencies and companies and I used to freelance on the site
And now I'm freelancing full-time been independent for maybe five years now full-time
Independent pretty good. And so you your base remote remotely in tel-aviv, right? Is that a lovely city to work in?
It's an awesome city. It's great. It's got a beach great weather
Becomes super hot in the summer, but it's great
It has a very big tech scene which helps me to get a lot of projects interesting projects around here
There's a big startup ecosystem. But also
Working with clients around the world Europe is the same timezone. So that's easy and United States a little bit more difficult
West Coast is difficult. But but I do that I do that sometimes I you know
I stay up late. They wake up earlier and I manage to work together. Yeah, that's great
and and
Do you like to work from home or is it like me go back to coffee shops during the day to do yet?
This is my home office. Yeah ever not on office. I'm married. I got two kids
So that's that that creates a lot of flexibility and it's it's fun. Oh definitely, so maybe you can take us through
from the start of your day
Working remotely and how you sort of go about I guess navigating your day
So I wake up 6 a.m. Every day
first thing I try to wake up before my kids so I could put the video on upload because I upload every day so
first thing because the last thing I do in a
We just put the render on so I wake up first thing I put the upload on
then I go spend time with the kids do breakfast and all that type of thing and when they're off to
Kindergartens, I got I get started on my work. So
Schedule is basically. Yeah, I start with uploading the video to YouTube and then managing my tasks for the day
so basically I have my
productivity
Process I would say is a bit scattered. So what I usually have is I usually have a
Schedule which I do my weekly planning in and I break it down per day
but then every day when I wake up in the morning, I kind of I
Take a look at my inbox and if there is something I reprioritize the day based on what's there recently?
I've also started to use the Google Tasks which they've integrated into the new Gmail
Which is awesome. It really helps me to capture things on the go
so I also have the app on the iPhone and what I like is that it's super super light and so I can really
Capture it before actually before that which I started only maybe last month
So I used to capture things in the Gmail in
Gmail inbox because that was just a fastest way to capture things on the go now I do that with
With the Google Tasks, I broke it down into three lists. So I have kind of like freelance
YouTube if I have an idea for a YouTube and then prospero things that I need to do regarding to my product business and
and I
Every week where every day I might take from those three lists into kind of the main to do and I work from there
So that's that's my personal to-do
But also when I work with clients or on prospero, then I use other tools to communicate with other people that I work with
mainly Trello
Which I have a board usually with on every project that I work on
Yeah, I think that's basically it and I try to use the mornings
I try to structure my days in a way that my mornings are kind of like creative time
So that's kind of like what's called deep deep work sessions where I try to have no interruptions
After my morning check of my email
I try not to check emails and just get get work done and then schedule all my meetings
And other management stuff to afternoon where I'm kind of a bit more tired. I'm a morning person
Generally, that's good. And the the planning side of stuff that you mentioned?
do you tent it when you like sitting down and going through your tasks for the day in sketchbook do you tend to
Have like a week breakout session where you plan the week ahead or do you do something like that? Yes, so every every
end of the weekend
In Israel, we work Sunday to 2 Thursday
So my weekend actually ends on Saturday evening. We wear our Sundays
So on Saturday night before the Week starts I sit down and I plan my week
So when I start my week, I already have the week laid out already
And I know what I gotta do
that's pretty it's pretty easy to sort of flow and I can imagine is it
When you're freelancing sort of things change week to week. How do you go about?
An ever-changing schedule like let's say you get a bit of work in the afternoon one day
Um, and you might have to reprioritize your week
how do you sort of I guess it's case-by-case but how do you handle that most of the time I usually have I
Actually made a video about this. I have a main structure for my week
So I know that this chunk of time is going to be crying. I might not know what client work
I will be doing that might be reprioritized last-minute
But I know that this is client work and this is prosper work and this is work dedicated to growth
You know new opportunities and stuff like that
So right now as I'm talking to you, this is growth time section. So what I'm doing now is not not
Correlated specifically in to making money right now. It's just things either learning or you know, developing relationships doing things like that
Okay. Now that's quite nice. I like that Thea you mentioned I have basically I work in my calendar my Google Calendar
have
Repeating chunks that are repeating so it says, you know every I don't know what Monday morning client work
This is the chunk from the morning to you. And then what I'm going to
reschedule things in I know where to put them and when I want to schedule meetings I know where to put them so it's like
Placeholders for you exactly quite nice like that. That's nice. Yeah, and you mentioned Google
Tasks in the calendar and Trello is there like any other productivity tools that you have had good experiences with that you'd like to recommend
Mmm you see you just open it
I
Get right now, actually I started working with coda I saw that you did a video encoder, right?
Yeah, gig notion to try I gave motion to try didn't work out for me for several reasons and now I'm working on coda
Actually, I'm working with coda also collaboratively
I'm having an approach now and so we have kind of a daily document where we kind of
Document what I did today and I get feedback on it. And so
Working with a coda has been really really cool because of some of the things that you can do
They're kind of edit tables and databases
inside a doc so it's like not having to jump from
Spreadsheets to dogs. I mainly where I work along with the Google Docs
But there you have to spread it out into a doc
That is either just a tax doc or a spreadsheet in coda
You can have the mix and also you can have kind of like sub Doc's within the same doc
So I find this really will it help for?
Managing that process so that new tool that's been really helpful like it's still not bug perfect
It's still got some issues. Yeah, but it's really cool
Brilliant and and maybe you touched on notion there like it's a big topic at the moment
I guess it I guess the the design industry is also finding some value in it. What are the reasons to why you
Said no to it and maybe yes to coder
So I try to use notion
As kind of a task manager
But the problem was it wasn't and I used their both their webbed web app and their mobile app, but there
Because there are their iOS sorry iOS have been so robust there trying to do so many things
it's just it wasn't as easy and
fast to capture things on the go so I would have to open it then it takes so long to open then you have to
Look for the specific doc that you want to edit and if you know the app press and so it was too much
Yeah, it was too much for
Simple tasks. I wanted something simple with it and then
I'm not sure exactly what what were the reasons when the
For what? I'm doing now why I thought Carl is much better. But um, yeah, I somehow fell for coda instead
Yeah code is doing quite well, though. It's like
Progressing quite fast in terms of yeah, I don't know. Is it open? Is it open for everybody to sign up? We're for it
I'm not sure. I think it might have done recently
Yeah, but yes
I had kind of like
signed up like a while ago and then I got an invite and then I see that I only have like nine invites left or
Something. Yeah, you have to panic. Yeah
Well, that's the sort of aim for this video will just be given out catering by it's below me
anyone wanna cater
Um, and I sort of wanted to touch from like how you got into design and freelancing
Obviously, there's so many benefits to freelancing, you know
Being able to create your own schedule to some extent but there's a lot a lot of hard work, but for you
What are the reasons for why you're still going with freelancing?
So for me I realized I was always
Bad at
Taking orders. I don't know how to say this. I'm not very good with authority
I think that the fact that I was working full-time
and learned so much and I'm still in good relationship with the people I worked for and they have been my my mentors and
actually today, I think the videos that goes out live today in my
Channel recommends you get a job if you want to mentor because honestly the best mentors I had one of the people I worked for
But I could not sustain everything after every time that I had kind of a learning curve when it died down
I was like I can bother to doing the stupid stuff area telling me to do it and where I want to move on
yeah, it could not sustain my the growth rate that I wanted for myself and
Having the freedom and the ability to do whatever I wanted minute to my time is
The way that I want and I feel like I'm much more productive
Yeah, I still think that it's changing now, but at least five years ago when I started
Not many not many employers who are open about remote and I knew that I could be so much more
effective and productive working from home without people around me everyday walking into my office and I wanted to be productive and
so
You know, but different people are different, you know
Some people find working from home very hard you so I think you have to find what works for me for you for me working
Remotely working from my home office worked for me for me
you know doing freelance and having new stream of
clients
Relationships topics to work on I find this very fun and you know, I get bored quickly. So it we were swell for me
Based on personality reasons. Yeah. Yeah, and and you can see it's great and on that sort of topic of remote
Obviously, there's gonna be a lot of design is potentially since it is so even watching Samia channel. What would you be?
Recommending to them if they were actually considering being a remote worker from scratch. I guess the young designers say coming in
Because it's a tough thing
It's a tough thing to do. The most important thing is communication
Right. It's very very hard. Even for me at this stage
There are a lot of things which I would prefer to do face to face and if my clients are
Around if their interview I would go to meet them a lot of times
There are a lot of benefits for having a face to face
Meetings and even the clients that I have abroad and I have clients on long term relationship that are raw we try to meet up
You know at least once a year, there's no
You know
it's very easy to build a relationship and improve your communication and understanding when you meet in person, so
What's really important is to develop really good communication skills. So whether it is, you know writing emails to really clearly
Explain why you did something or what you need help with. So I think communication is key. That's pretty good advice
Ron it's been great having you here on my channel. Do you it's been a pleasure. Thank you van
It's weird because I've been watching you for so long as I was saying before and it's that
Having you here. It's girl always a pleasure. Um, and where can people find you after this cool
Um, so maybe on YouTube if you look up flocks or on Sega, or you can check out my website
But it's run seven calm too else, but it's not it's not much
probably two places to look for me our YouTube or Instagram which is like now growing with stories like
So it's about my favorite place
Smashing. Oh, I want those all below but it's been great having you in the
Got just been a pleasure Francesca loads of good notes. So thank you. All right. Talk soon
Yeah, it tooks every day. Cheers. Bye